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Massive fire shuts down Kenya’s main airport in Nairobi

Hundreds of passengers were stranded outside busiest airport in East Africa as firefighters, reportedly hampered by a lack of functioning equipment, struggled to battle intense flames.

Onlookers watch as black smoke billows from the international arrival unit of Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi, Kenya, on Wednesday. A massive fire engulfed the arrivals hall at Kenya's main international airport, forcing East Africa's largest airport to close and the rerouting of all inbound flights. (Segeni Ngethe / AP)

By The Washington Post

Wed., Aug. 7, 2013

NAIROBI, KENYA—Kenyan authorities on Wednesday shut down Nairobi’s main international airport, the gateway to one of sub-Saharan Africa’s most vital trading regions, after a massive pre-dawn fire engulfed and badly damaged the facility.

Hundreds of passengers were stranded outside Jomo Kenyatta International Airport as firefighters, reportedly hampered by a lack of functioning equipment, struggled to battle intense flames and plumes of smoke.

There were no immediate reports of casualties or injuries from the blaze, which started about 5 a.m. in the airport’s arrivals and immigrations area, Kenyan officials said.

“It was huge, the smoke billowing, and it didn’t seem to be stopping,” passenger Barry Fisher, who was trying to get to Ethiopia, told The Associated Press.

By late Wednesday, the airport had reopened for domestic and cargo flights, but international flights, dozens of which were cancelled, were not able to fly out. Kenyan officials said they intended to convert a domestic unit into an international terminal for the time being, in an attempt to end the backlog.

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The cause of the fire was not known. Security officials in Nairobi have been on high alert in recent days, as a result of intercepted intelligence suggesting a possible attack on Western targets in the Middle East or Africa, as well as the anniversary on Wednesday of the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, which killed a total of 224 people.

Boniface Mwaniki, head of Kenya’s anti-terrorism operations, told The Associated Press earlier Wednesday that he was waiting for the fire to be put out so that he could inspect the scene before making a judgment as to the cause.

One potential motive for arson is a recent dispute between Kenyan airport authority officials and owners of duty-free shops at the facility. Some of the shops were forcibly closed after a lease agreement expired.

Witnesses said firefighters arrived late to battle the blaze and appeared hobbled by a lack of equipment. As of last month, Nairobi County’s fire department did not have a single working fire engine, the Daily Nation newspaper reported at the time, having auctioned off three engines in an effort to pay a $1,000 repair bill.

“It is a disgrace of biblical proportions that the entire Nairobi County does not have a public fire engine in working condition,” the paper wrote in an editorial. As government officials debated whether to buy new engines or repair old ones, the editorial scolded, they set aside money “to build mansions for governors, big vehicles for county executives and other needs without a direct benefit to Kenyans.”

Michael Kamau, Kenya’s transportation and infrastructure secretary, said the fire had started in a central part of the airport and that “this made access difficult.”

Local television images showed that portions of the terminal had been destroyed, its interior gutted and blackened and the roof partly caved in.

The disruption of one of East Africa’s busiest airports will be a substantial blow to Kenya’s economy and the whole region, with a ripple effect around the globe. The nation supplies a third of the flowers sold in Europe, transporting them out of the airport and generating $1 billion in foreign exchange each year. The airport shutdown also comes at the height of tourism season, one of the country’s core sources of foreign revenue.

Katie Price, an aid worker for Baltimore-based Catholic Relief Services, arrived in Nairobi on a flight from Malawi about 5 a.m. Upon landing, passengers were told were was a “small fire” at the airport and that they needed to remain on the plane. Two hours later, Price and hundreds of passengers were on the tarmac “watching the fire get bigger and bigger,” she said.

“It looked like the entire terminal would be gone,” Price said. “Everyone remained pretty calm, until (airport officials) alerted us that a fuel line was underneath a part of the terminal. They evacuated the planes and the passengers to the cargo area.”

After several more hours, she and thousands of other passengers were allowed to leave the airport through a makeshift terminal. Typically, immigration officers take fingerprints and photos of arriving passengers, a security precaution in a part of the world where Al-Qaeda-linked militants remain active. But Price said that none of the passengers was screened before being given stamps to enter the country.

In light of the immense damage to the airport terminal, it is highly likely the facility’s security infrastructure was destroyed, including passport records. Price, who was staying in a downtown hotel, waiting to travel to Congo, said she was not told when she could travel.

“There are just hundreds, thousands, of passengers waiting to fly to other cities in Africa,” she said.

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